


resilience

by frogcorruption



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Injury Recovery, Short & Sweet, Sports Injury, Wordcount: 100-500
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-18 00:41:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29234697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frogcorruption/pseuds/frogcorruption
Summary: Udai Tenma is always looking up, up, up at the burning, bright sun. No matter how many times he falls, he always rises again to reach for it again.
Kudos: 1





	resilience

**Author's Note:**

> a very short ode to my love for udai tenma

Udai Tenma is always looking up, up, up at the burning, bright sun. No matter how many times he falls, he always rises again to reach for it again.

Of course, after you rise, you crash. But crashes had never kept him down for long.

Perhaps his determination was a side effect of his involvement in high school sports. The epic highs and lows of high school volleyball, or something. It's hard to beat a rise as steep as his rise to the ace, to becoming Karasuno's Little Giant. 

How sad then, that life as Tenma now knew it, consisted of only crashes. 

His teammates' crashes had arrived in the form of a couple of college crises and maybe a year or two of financial instability.

Tenma's was violent like Icarus's, crashing and burning, leaving him with nothing but a left knee that no longer works and an aching wanting for more. 

Still, he often thinks that it's ironic- that the Little Giant was defeated by something as minuscule as a wrong landing. It must be a cosmic joke from the universe that Udai Tenma, who once soared, can no longer even jump. 

Sometimes, he's grateful it didn't happen until the end of his third year. Small mercies. 

He's better now, finally able to look towards the sun again. It's taken him years to get this far, both physically and mentally. Two surgeries, years of physical therapy, and countless other struggles. Even now, there are days when he can't get out of bed. Sometimes because he wakes up with sharp pains that spasm through his knee every time he dares to move. Sometimes because he cannot bring himself to get up, and can only lie there, numb.

But those days are finally becoming farther and fewer between.

Of course, he still misses volleyball like a phantom limb. He has not been able to play since high school.

What was once his life and blood was gone in an instant. Something to be said for his resilience, he supposes. As long as he can keep looking up, keep reaching for the sun, Udai knows that he will be okay.

After all, the sun is watching over him. 


End file.
